Iceland-msg - 4/10/05 History and culture of Iceland. NOTE: See also the files: Norse-msg, pst-Vik-Norse-msg, Norse-food-art, N-drink-ves-msg, ships-msg, Norse-games-art, fd-Norse-msg, names-Norse-msg, fish-skin-tan-msg, stockfish-msg. ************************************************************************ NOTICE - This file is a collection of various messages having a common theme that I have collected from my reading of the various computer networks. Some messages date back to 1989, some may be as recent as yesterday. This file is part of a collection of files called Stefan's Florilegium. These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org I have done a limited amount of editing. Messages having to do with separate topics were sometimes split into different files and sometimes extraneous information was removed. For instance, the message IDs were removed to save space and remove clutter. The comments made in these messages are not necessarily my viewpoints. I make no claims as to the accuracy of the information given by the individual authors. Please respect the time and efforts of those who have written these messages. The copyright status of these messages is unclear at this time. If information is published from these messages, please give credit to the originator(s). Thank you, Mark S. Harris AKA: THLord Stefan li Rous Stefan at florilegium.org ************************************************************************ Newsgroups: rec.org.sca From: DDFr at Midway.UChicago.edu (David Friedman) Subject: Re: The Status of Myrkfaelen, is it really ruled by Aethelmarc? Organization: University of Chicago Law School Date: Fri, 23 Jun 1995 14:42:11 GMT E. F. MORRILL asks Orlando: > Pretty much though out the span of time that the majority of us play, > "everyone" was in Fealty or "owed" something to someone else. Times of > Kings and Queens and Knights doing "great deeds". Romance. The "good" things. > I have never understood Myrkfaelen's stand on this issue. Iceland, according to the Icelanders' account, was settled by refugees from the forcible unification of Norway under King Harald Haarfagr. From the settlement of Iceland in about 870 until the end of Icelandic independence in about 1263, Iceland owed allegiance to no king. The internal political system was not feudal in the ordinary sense; thingmen were associated with chieftains, but were free to change their tie to any other chieftain that would have them. With the exception of some Icelanders who chose to become retainers of foreign kings (usually the king of Norway), virtually nobody in Iceland was in fealty to anyone. Your picture of medieval history apparently leaves out one of its most interesting societies (and, incidentally, one that produced some of the best literature of the middle ages). That is no reason why other people should do the same. Popular views of the middle ages (kings and queens and knights in shining armor) may be a good starting point for people in the SCA, but surely one of the points of what we are doing is to go deeper into the real middle ages, not just stay with the hollywood version. The sagas are, at least in my view, better literature than the chansons de geste, and their heroes and heroines more interesting people. Myrkfaelinn deserves credit for trying to model their group on a very real and (as your posting suggests) too little known part of the middle ages. > Is MYRK willing to accept than maybe someday there may be a > King or Prince who would expouse the ideas I put forth? Someone who would > not accept the "status-quo" and, according to their beliefs and > convictions, rule? Many years ago, Marion of Edwinstowe commented that my one qualification for the throne was that I already knew that being king and thirty-five cents would get you a ride on the MTA. If a king tries to follow the policy you outlined, and if Myrkfaelinn then is the Myrkfaelinn I have known, he will learn that lesson. Anyone who believes that SCA kings "rule" in any strong sense of that term is, in my view, not qualified for the job. -- David/Cariadoc DDFr at Midway.UChicago.Edu From: harpa at ismennt.is (Harpa Hreinsdottir) Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Web-pages about Egil's saga Date: 3 Apr 1996 16:44:03 -0000 Organization: Islenska menntanetid You can now read about the viking and poet Egill Skalla-Grimsson in English. Students at a comprehensive school in Iceland have made some web-pages about Egil's saga and translated them into English. They can be seen at: http://rvik.ismennt.is/~harpa/forn/english/e_egils/e_egils.html or just go to http://rvik.ismennt.is/~harpa/forn and choose the English version. Yours Harpa Hreinsdottir harpa at ismennt.is From: DDFr at Best.com (David Friedman) Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Re: Help with Icelandic personna Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 00:48:50 -0800 Organization: School of Law, Santa Clara University In article <546l9d$p7 at binky.axionet.com>, Lithium <lithium at axionet.com> wrote: > I have recently joined the sca and would like to try to make my personna > Icelandic do to my ethnic background. I unfortuatly have no living > Icelandic relatives left and am finding anything about medieval iceland > particularly hard to find. If you have any ideas where i would find some > info I would be very grateful. Congratulations, you have the world's most fun to research persona. The Icelandic sagas give a very realistic picture of the society, they are good reading, they were written in period, and a fair number of them are currently in print in English translations, often in paperback. Good examples are Egil Saga, Njal Saga, Laxdaela Saga, Gisli Saga, ... . A good modern historian of saga period Iceland is Jesse Byock, who has published several books. If you are curious about the legal system, take a look at my article on "Private Production and Enforcement of Law," reachable from my academic web page at: http://www.best.com/~ddfr/Academic/Academic.html David/Cariadoc From: gunnora at bga.com (Gunnora Hallakarva) Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Re: Help with Icelandic personna Date: 19 Oct 1996 20:27:35 GMT In article <546l9d$p7 at binky.axionet.com>, lithium at axionet.com says... > I have recently joined the sca and would like to try to make my personna >Icelandic do to my ethnic background. I unfortuatly have no living >Icelandic relatives left and am finding anything about medieval iceland >particularly hard to find. If you have any ideas where i would find some >info I would be very grateful. > >Colleen Gordondottir. Try the following: Byock, Jesse. Feud in the Icelandic Saga. Berkeley: U of California Press. 1982. Byock, Jesse. Medieval Iceland: Society, Sagas and Power. Berkeley: U of California Press. 1988. Dennis, Andrew, Peter Foote and Richard Perkins, trans. Laws of Early Iceland: Gragas. Vol I. Winnipeg: U of Manitoba Press. 1980. Frank, Roberta. "Marriage in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Iceland." Viator 4 (1973): 473-484. Fry, Donald K. Norse Sagas Translated into English: A Bibliography. New York: AMS Press. 1980. Gelsinger, Bruce. Icelandic Enterprise: Commerce and Economy in the Middle Ages. Columbia: U of S. Carolina Press. 1981. Hastrup, Kirsten. Culture and History in Medieval iceland: An Anthropological Analysis of Structure and Change. Oxford: Clarendon. 1985. Jacobsen, Grethe. "The Position of Women in Scandinavia During the Viking Period." MA Thesis. U of Wisconsin. 1978. Jochens, Jenny M. "The Church and Sexuality in Medieval Iceland." Journal of Medieval History 6 (1980): 377-392. Jochens, Jenny M. "The Medieval Icelandic Heroine: Fact or Fiction?" Viator 17 (1986): 35-50. These books and articles are a start. There are tons of books on the topic, many of which are unfortunately not in English. Post e-mail direct to me if you need more guidance in your literature search. -- Gunnora Hallakarva Herskerinde From: DDFr at Best.com (David Friedman) Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Re: Help with Icelandic personna Date: Sat, 19 Oct 1996 23:46:54 -0800 Organization: School of Law, Santa Clara University gunnora at bga.com (Gunnora Hallakarva) wrote: > Gelsinger, Bruce. Icelandic Enterprise: Commerce and Economy in the > Middle Ages. Columbia: U of S. Carolina Press. 1981. The economic analysis in the book is dreadful. See my review in _History of Political Economy_ when the book came out. David/Cariadoc Newsgroups: rec.org.sca From: bq676 at torfree.net (Kristine E. Maitland) Subject: Re: Help with Icelandic personna Organization: Toronto Free-Net Date: Tue, 22 Oct 1996 17:23:40 GMT Gunnora Hallakarva (gunnora at bga.com) wrote: : lithium at axionet.com says... : > I have recently joined the sca and would like to try to make my personna : >Icelandic do to my ethnic background. I unfortuatly have no living : >Icelandic relatives left and am finding anything about medieval iceland : >particularly hard to find. If you have any ideas where i would find some : >info I would be very grateful. : > : >Colleen Gordondottir. : : Try the following: (excellent booklist deleted) Or you can get the handbook for Eoforwic's icelandic assembly (the Canton of Eoforwic held an Icelandic event a couple of years ago). Mistress Nicolaa! Are there any spare copies still roaming around in Ealdormere? If not, drop me a line, Colleen and we'll see about you getting MY copy. la rosa nera Ines Ealdormere bq676 at torfree.net Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1999 01:22:25 -0000 From: <nannar at isholf.is> Subject: Re: SC - food and hospitality Christine A Seelye-King <mermayde at juno.com> said: >> Not much bread and porridge, as most grain had to be imported (the >>only grain grown with any success in Iceland is barley, and that was >>mostly used for ale). > >This is contrary to what I have read. The reasoning being that much more >value could be had from cooked barley than from ale. (It would certainly >go farther.) Hmm. Yes, but this is the Vikings, remember? They probably considered greater value to be had from ale ... the alternative was to import the ale (which was also done) and go without it six months of the year (ships only sailed to Iceland in the summer months; that is why guest were sometimes invited to spend the whole winter). Anyway, every source Ive consulted says barley was cultivated to make ale and bread. In that order. >>The old Norse poem Hvaml, which I was made to learn by heart at a >>very tender age, largely deals with the theme of hospitality - what >>hospitality to offer a guest, and how to accept it. > >OOh! Would you be able to re-create it (in English) for us here? I >would love to have it! Many thanks in advance, >Mistress Christianna MacGrain A translation by W.H.Auden is to be found at this site (it pretty much gets the meaning of the original but lacks its haunting beauty): http://www.itn.is/~mar/havamal.htm "The herd knows its homing time, And leaves the grazing ground: But the glutton never knows how much His belly is able to hold." (from Hvaml) Nanna Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 19:19:14 -0800 From: david friedman <ddfr at best.com> Subject: Re: SC - food and hospitality At 6:44 PM -0500 1/11/99, Christine A Seelye-King wrote: >>>Elaina >>The old Norse poem Hvaml, which I was made to learn by heart at a >>very tender age, largely deals with the theme of hospitality - what >>hospitality to offer a guest, and how to accept it. > >OOh! Would you be able to re-create it (in English) for us here? I >would love to have it! Havamal is part of the Elder Edda, readily available in English translation. "Shun not the mead but drink in measure; Speak to the point or be still." David/Cariadoc http://www.best.com/~ddfr/ Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1999 00:30:01 -0000 From: "=?iso-8859-1?Q?Nanna_R=F6gnvaldard=F3ttir?=" <nannar at isholf.is> Subject: Re: SC - "bog butter" >I thought I was the only one questioning the hair in the butter. I have had >dairy goat herds in the past and have never had a problem with hair in the >milk. Just wash the udders properly and strain the milk before you make butter >or cheese. Your milk is free of any imperfections. I can't imagine anyone not >being clever enough to figure this out for themselves. Ive no idea how clever the old Icelanders were. What I know is they had to keep - and milk - their cows in cramped, windowless, dark, stuffy hovels made of stone and sod, lit only by by meagre and flickering tallow or fish liver oil lanterns. And the shaggy, long-haired ewes were milked out in the fields in all kinds of weather, often far from any source of water (I can personally attest to the fact that you cant handle Icelandic sheep, in early summer at least, when they are shedding their old coat of wool, without wool hairs clinging to everything, in particular to your hands). I believe most people strained their milk through horsehair sieves, but they seem not to have caught everything. And some were too poor to afford even such a basic utensil. But given the general low standards of cleanliness and hygiene of my countrymen at the time (commented upon by European visitors from the 16th century onwards), Id say a few hairs in the butter would have been the least of their worries. Nanna Date: Wed, 7 Jul 1999 18:32:34 -0000 From: "=?iso-8859-1?Q?Nanna_R=F6gnvaldard=F3ttir?=" <nannar at isholf.is> Subject: Re: SC - exposure of children Phlip wrote: >"Exposure of children" is a polite phrase describing taking an unwanted >child (female, too many other kids, deformed, bastard, politically >undesirable bloodlines, whatever) and leaving it out in the woods to die >without shedding its blood, shedding the blood of a relative being an >undesirable thing in most cultures. In Iceland at least, the most common reason seems to have been fear of overpopulation - the babies that were left to die mostly belonged to the poor, or to slaves. The father, or the master, had absolute control over the fate of his child, but according to Christian beliefs, the child itself had a right to life. But the Icelandic Christians seem to have been swayed by economic arguments - both regarding exposure and the eating of horsemeat. This is from The Saga of lafur Tryggvason (sorry, cant find the English translation just now so Ill just translate loosely myself): "Those men who have been the greatest opponents of Christianisation will hardly find it easy to understand how it can be combined to feed every child that is born, both to poor men and rich, but at the same time forbid and deny as food something that used to be very important for the common people" (i.e. horsemeat). >There is always the "possibility" of rescue, which salves some folks' >fragile consciences. The theme of abandoned children being rescued is a very >important one across many of our cultures- look at Moses and Romulus and >Remus, for example. Yes, there are a few examples of this in the Icelandic sagas also. Usually, however, these wretched souls turned into fearsome ghosts and sought revenge on their parents, or on innocent travellers that happened to pass the place where the children had been abandoned. Nanna Date: Wed, 7 Jul 1999 09:01:58 -0000 From: "=?iso-8859-1?Q?Nanna_R=F6gnvaldard=F3ttir?=" <nannar at isholf.is> Subject: Re: SC - Horsemeat, was Re: "cruel food"- Ras asks: ><< we are celebrating 1000 years of Christianity next year anyway >> > >Why? You mean, why celebrate at all, or why celebrate next year when scholars know we probably got the date wrong? The second one is easy - 1000 is a nice round number, and generations of Icelanders have believed it to be the correct year. If you are asking - why celebrate at all - leaving religious issues aside, well, the Christianisation of Iceland is one of the major events in our history, it laid the ground for structural changes in our society, and besides it happened in a pretty unique manner. Is there another instance when a whole nation decides, without the use of force and without much prelude, to abandon its traditional belief and accept a new faith? The decision to convert was, according to what Ari fr :i ?orgilsson wrote in the Book of the Icelanders, made by ?orgeir (Thorgeir) Ljsvetningago :i, a pagan chieftain who also held the position of Law Speaker - the only public office in the Icelandic Commonwealth. He lay down under his pelt and uttered no word for two days. At the end of this period, he called together the Althing (this happened at ?ingvellir, when the Althing was in session) and stipulated that Icelanders should be baptised in the Christian faith, to avoid conflict and strife. (They were, however, allowed to worship pagan gods secretly and practice ancient customs, such as the exposure of children and the eating of horse meat.) So, what I personally will be celebrating next year is not the anniversary of Christianisation, but the fact that we Icelanders have always chosen the peaceful solution. (Well, mostly.) Nanna From the Norse Folk List - Date: Tue, 4 Jan 2000 15:58:10 -0000 From: nanna at idunn.is (Nanna Rognvaldardottir) Subject: Re: Names with Norse Origin > Also, if you have a friend going to Iceland, have 'em procure a phone >book. ;> Or you could check the Icelandic online phone book at: http://www.simaskra.is/ (search by first name, middle name or last name - if you type a fairly common last name such as Helgason or Bjarnad-ttir into the Kenninafn field and leave the others blank, you should get a long list of first names to study - then you can ask me if they are Saga period or more recent) or the National register at: http://www.bi.is/toflur/thjodskra/nafnaskra2.asp (chose Nafn einstaklings and search by first name, or first and last name) >While not everything in the Icelandic phone book is a Viking Age >name, I"d be willing to bet that 75% or so of them are. More or less, yes. While my own name is an satrS godess name that probably wasn't used as a given name until the 18th century, my children, my parents, my siblings, my nephews and nieces all bear names from the Saga period, little changed except that names now ending in -ur used to end in -r. Male names in the family are Ragnvaldur, Hjalti, Eir'kur, Ing-lfur, -rir, Oddur, Bergur, Bjarni - the females are Sigr'ur, Valgerur, GurSn, Helga, Svava, sd's. Nanna Ragnvaldard-ttir Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 13:31:02 -0000 From: nanna at idunn.is (Nanna Rognvaldardottir) Subject: Re: SC - honeymoon sites Ras wrote: > You do realize, Nanna, that you are making it extremely difficult for Elysant > and I to decide between France and Iceland for a honey moon? :-0 Oh, I do, I do - but unless you are planning a very short engagement, the testicle season will be long over. [see organ-meats-msg - Stefan] But if you travel with Icelandair to France, you can have a 3-day stopover at no extra cost ... >Go to Iceland ... in the winter ... >I just read an account of someone who just came back >from Iceland and they raved about the hospitality, the >hot spas, the cuisine and the wonderfully romantic >idea of sharing body warmth ... need I say more? > >Huette All of that would apply for a summer visit also, not least the need for sharing body warmth - anything above 17 degrees C (62 deg F) for three days in a row is considered a major heatwawe around here. And then there is the midnight sun. And a certain museum I'm not mentioning. Nanna From: Bob Hurley <bhurley at charter.net> Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Re: Iceland Date: Sat, 08 Apr 2000 23:09:57 -0400 ASLAAN2 wrote: > If you know of any, could you please point me to resourses for developing a > female Icelandic persona of any time in period? My thanks in advance. > > Lady Stefana This is a good starting place: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook2.html#lit2 which is an online source for the sagas, many of which were about Icelanders. Thorgrim inn islendingr From: dirkviking at aol.com (DirkViking) Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Re: Iceland Date: 09 Apr 2000 21:23:50 GMT You might try _Women in Old Norse Society_ by Jenny Jochens ISBN 0-8014-8520-7 She leans pretty heavily on Iceland. Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2000 04:24:09 -0000 From: "=?iso-8859-1?Q?Nanna_R=F6gnvaldard=F3ttir?=" <nannar at isholf.is> Subject: Re: SC - Clean Vikings -- OT >Iceland has bath-houses >using volcanic hot springs that have been in continuous use >since the Settlement. Now where is this documented? *sigh* Huh? Is the lady saying that we have bath-houses that have been in continuous use since the Settlement? If so, I'd dearly love directions to find one of them. If she means that the hot springs have been used for bathing since the Settlement, well, some of them were used then, and are used now, but I'm not too sure about the continuous use. For washing and sometimes cooking, yes. For bathing - well ... She also says, in the article referred to: >In Iceland where natural hot springs are common, the naturally heated >water was incorporated into the bath-house. This could easily be understood as if most farms had a bath-house heated with water from hot springs. I'm not saying there weren't any but offhand, I can't recall any such bath-house mentioned in the Sagas. Sure, a house was probably built around Snorralaug in Reykholt and a few other hot springs but that was not the norm. There was a bath-house (or bathroom, probably a sauna of sorts) at most farms but it was usually heated by firewood. Later, when wood became scarce, the bathroom was the only heated room in the farmhouse and people began sleeping there. Later still, almost all fuel (mostly peat and dung, at that point) had to be used for cooking and people stopped bathing, more or less - but the "bathroom" kept its name (ba?stofa). For centuries, the main sleeping/living/dining/working room of the Icelandic farm went by the name of bathroom. My mother was born in a "ba?stofa" in 1928. Yes, the old Icelanders probably bathed a lot, as did the Vikings (saturday is still called "laugardagur" (bath day) in Icelandic). And they probably used natural hot springs when available. But relatively few Icelandic farms have a hot spring of suitable temperature close by the farmhouse, so these naturally heated bath-houses couldn't have been that common, really. Nanna Date: Sun, 7 Jan 2001 02:40:43 EST From: Gerekr at aol.com Subject: SC - Norse news - Gragas II at last Please pass this info to anyone you know who has a SERIOUS interest in things Norse -- volume II of the Laws of Early Iceland (Gragas), from the University of Manitoba Press, is now available!! We've been waiting (impatiently!) since 1985 or so, #1 was published in 1980. The nice man at the press wrote -- "we've finally updated our website, so if you know of anyone/groups who might be interested, they can check under New Books at http://www.umanitoba.ca/uofmpress " Gerek who got it for Christmas, and Chimene who managed a surprise for a change, 8-)!! Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 09:39:09 -0000 From: "Nanna Rognvaldardottir" <nanna at idunn.is> Subject: SC - Travels in Iceland?] 'Lainie wrote: >> A friend is going to Iceland, does anybody have suggestions of cool >> things to see or do there? Depends on a lot of things. Is the friend coming here now, or next month, or later? How many days is he planning to stay? Does he want to travel a lot, or stay mostly in Reykjavk? Does he want information on the Reykjavk nightlife, which I understand is pretty cool? (couldn't help there myself but I've got a resident expert on that). Or does he just want to know about museums and such? >> I found the Icelandic Tourist board, and a site on Icelandic archeology >> (http://www.mnh.si.edu/vikings/voyage/subset/iceland/archeo.html) but other >> than that, information seems rather scarce. >> >> Suggestions? Unfortunately, the National Museum (www.natmus.is/English/index.htm) is still mostly closed for renovation (should have reopened last year but didn't). Then of course there is our one real national treasure, the old manuscripts at the rni Magnsson Institute (try www.am.hi.is) - I think there is an exhibition just now of manuscripts and documents connected to the discovery of Greenland and Vinland (America). ingvellir, site of the old parliament for 868 years (until 1798) and a sort of national shrine - no old buildings or anything like that but a beautiful place and the center of Icelandic history. Then there are the usual tourist places like Gullfoss (waterfall) and Geysir (famous hot spring which was more or less dormant for most of the 20th century but has been very active since the earthquakes last summer) - and if the friend is an outdoor type, there is no end to the possibilities. The weather is - unpredictable. At all times. There have been times this winter when Iceland was the warmest spot north of the Alps (here in Reykjavk, we are currently experiencing the first snow of the winter); in the North (my birthplace), snow in July is not unheard of. If there is anything specific this person wants to know, he is welcome to email me at nannar at isholf.is. Nanna Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 09:16:03 -0800 From: david friedman <ddfr at best.com> Subject: Re: SC - Travels in Iceland?] >Then of course there is our one real national treasure, the old >manuscripts at the rni Magnsson Institute (try www.am.hi.is) The manuscripts are great, but your national treasure isn't the manuscripts, it's what was written in them. Men die, Horses die, (and parchment eventually dies too, although it takes longer) I hope they get the museum opened again. My favorite thing in it, on a long ago visit, was a case full of hacksilver. Museums, for some reason, are unwilling to let you take their jewellery apart to see how it is made, so it is nice when someone else has done it for you. - -- David/Cariadoc http://www.daviddfriedman.com/ From: "=?iso-8859-1?Q?Nanna_R=F6gnvaldard=F3ttir?=" <nannar at isholf.is> To: <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org> Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Summer starts WHEN? Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2001 06:08:05 -0000 Here in Iceland, Summer starts on the first Thursday after April 18th, and has done so for at least 1000 years. But then, the old Icelandic calendar has only two seasons. The first day of summer is an official holiday, with parades and outdoor celebrations which usually have to be moved inside because of snow or bad weather. Nanna From: "Nanna Rognvaldardottir" <nanna at idunn.is> To: <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org> Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Summer starts WHEN? Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2001 09:32:32 -0000 Stefan asked: > Did these celebrations used to be done outdoors? If so, does this change > to doing them indoors mean: > a) The climate has changed > or > b) There are now larger buildings such that large group activities can > now be held inside instead of outside > or > c) Modern Icelanders have become more comfort conscious? > or > d) Even if this date has always started Summer, it wasn't celebrated > the way it is now? All of the above are true but the correct answer is d). Icelanders used to be much wiser than this, they celebrated indoors, by serving feasts, playing games and giving gifts - the custom of giving a sumargjaf predates Christmas gifts in Iceland by several centuries. This was done in the home; larger celebrations began in the late 19th century and the parades and such in the 1920s. This day is also the first day of the month of Harpa and since Harpa was personified as a young girl, she was especially celebrated by young men - how, I'm not quite sure. It is said to be a good omen if winter and summer "freeze together" - that is, if the temperature drops below freezing in the night before the first day of summer. Also, when you see the first summer moon, you should keep silent until someone speaks to you. Whatever he says (or "answers into the summer moon") can then be taken as a kind of omen or prophecy. Nanna From: "=?iso-8859-1?Q?Nanna_R=F6gnvaldard=F3ttir?=" <nannar at isholf.is> To: <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org> Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Iceland & Scotland - what to get? Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2001 01:14:57 -0000 From: Ginny Claphan <mizginny at yahoo.com> > >My parents will be traveling to Iceland (Klefavik, Reykjavik) and Scotland >(Glasgow, Iona, Edinburgh) on vacation for the next 2 weeks. What would be >interesting food/drink-related items to bring back for me that could fit in >a suitcase? That depends. Will they go straight back home from Iceland or are they going to Iceland first, then Scotland? If they are going straight to the US, then there is skyr (various types, and no, I'm not suggesting that yogurt with Pop-Rocks; not one of the Icelandic Dairy Association's brighter ideas, I think), cheeses (especially mysuostur, brown whey cheese), rye flatbread (with or without Iceland moss), perhaps a bag of Iceland moss, hverabrau=F0 (dark rye bread baked overnight in hot earth close to a geyser), smoked lamb (Icelandic livestock is completely free of BSE and foot and mouth, but I'm still not sure if you can import it to the US), smoked salmon and trout, various types of dried fish (har=F0fiskur), a bag of s=FApujurtir, "soupherbs" (various mixed vegetables and herbs) for the traditional Icelandic lamb soup (recipe can be obtained from me), some dried wild herbs, and several other things, like reindeer pate and lumpfish caviar. If they are going to Scotland before going back, it gets more complicated. The herbs are OK, of course. The dried fish will keep but frankly, I wouldn't want to keep dried fish - even well wrapped - with my clothes for a week. Ask them to bring at least a mini-bottle of Black Death. (Some rotten shark would go well with it but I doubt the US Customs would like it.) So I'm not really sure what to suggest. A horn spoon carved with a traditional pattern, perhaps. A traditional wooden lidded bowl (askur) is rather too expensive. An Icelandic crepe pan, which is really the best pan for making very thin crepes. If you want cookbooks, there are a couple of small recipe booklets available (although I would, quite frankly, recommend waiting for my own book, which is scheduled for November. It does have American measurements, at least.) That is all I can think of now. I can also point you at the best places to buy these things - do you know at what hotel your parents will be staying? Nanna Subject: [Ansteorra] Another Web Resource for icelandic Mss and Documents Date: Thu, 01 Nov 2001 09:35:54 -0600 From: "Christie Ward" <val_org at hotmail.com> To: <ansteorra at ansteorra.org> I thiought I'd forward along this tidbit that came to the Norsefolk list (and before that from the Atlantean list). I think it will be a useful resource not only for those interested in Norse literature, but also the calligraphers and illuminators out there. ::GUNNORA:: ----- Saganet http://saga.library.cornell.edu/ The National and University Library of Iceland has partnered with Cornell University to bring Saganet to the Web. This impressive digitization project will feature 380,000 manuscript pages and 145,000 printed pages of Old Icelandic literature and critical works published before 1900. The site offers "the full range of Icelandic family sagas" as well as Germanic/Nordic mythology, the history of Norwegian kings, and tales of European chivalry. Users can search or browse the collection, and there is a large amount of help documentation for those who need more assistance getting used to the interface. It is perhaps needless to say that the site is available in both English and Icelandic, though the texts and cataloging records are only in Icelandic. We had difficulties using the site with Netscape on a Mac platform but no problems with Internet Explorer. <the end> Edited by Mark S. Harris Iceland-msg